American-Iranian Council founder meets with Ahmadinejad.
This photo was taken recently and released today by Iranian human rights activists:
Houshang Amir-Ahmadi (or Hooshang Amirahmadi) met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently.
Houshang Amir-Ahmadi holds a Ph.D. in planning and international development from Cornell University and is a professor of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is the founder and president of the American Iranian Council (AIC).
** This photo is of Ahmadinejad and one of the regime’s U.S.-based brokers.
Ahmadinejad recently told a group of Basiji, as reported by the Iranian news, that he did not know this individual (Amir-Ahmadi).
…Not likely.
Iran Press News has more on this meeting (in Farsi).
Anti Mullah reported on the American-Iranian Council and its links to the Iranian regime in an earlier post:
In the 1990’s, the American-Iranian Council (AIC) (Here is a list of members of its board), with backing from multinational oil companies, was a front for the Iran’s lobbying efforts in the US.
Houshang Amir-Ahmadi served as its president. Amirahmadi has been an active pro-Tehran player in the US since early 1980s. While residing in US, he was also a presidential candidate in Iran’s elections.
He officially collaborated with different Iranian institutions and notably the Islamic foreign ministry.
In 1999 and 2000 Trita Parsi was closely working with Amirahmadi and was well positioned in the leadership of AIC.
In 2001, the pro-Iran lobby in the United States became intensely active to prevent the renewal of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), and to improve the US-Iran relations.
Despite extraordinary pressure from the lobby, ILSA passed overwhelmingly.
This photo released today by Iranian activists follows the news from yesterday that Trita Parsi from the American Iranian Council is thought to be an advisor to Barack Obama on Iranian foreign policy.
UPDATE: Here is a report on the American Iranian Council back in 2002 that is very informative. The IAC has been campaigning for the mullas for years:
Mounting evidence that Tehran is shielding hundreds of fleeing al Qaeda terrorists and is working to destroy what’s left of the Arab-Israeli peace process have made it increasingly difficult to push for “closer” U.S.-Iranian ties with a straight face. Nevertheless, a number of high-powered folks in Washington seem determined to try.
The designated vehicle for their campaign is an organization calling itself the American Iranian Council (AIC). The AIC’s board of corporate “sponsors and collaborators” includes prominent oil and gas companies that have been effectively shut out of exploration in Iran as a result of U.S. economic sanctions. The board includes representatives of energy firms such as ARCO; Ashland Oil Inc.; BP; Chase Manhattan Bank; Chevron; Conoco Inc.; Exxon; Shell, as well as George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Its various boards of directors include such luminaries as former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau; former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala; Democratic Party bigwig Sargent Shriver; Under secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering, now a vice president with Boeing Corp.; Judith Kipper of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Gary Sick, a former member of Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council staff and leading purveyor of the “October Surprise” fraud — the scurrilous charge that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign plotted to drag out the Iranian hostage crisis to embarrass Mr. Carter. The head of the AIC is a Rutgers University professor named Hooshang Amirahmadi, who suggests that President Bush’s characterization of the current Iranian government as part of an “axis of evil” could result in “colossal death and destruction.”
