(AP) — Iran’s first Vice President Mohammad Mokhber was appointed as acting president of the Islamic Republic on Monday after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in the country’s northwest.

Mokhber, 68, largely has been in the shadows compared to other politicians in Iran’s Shiite theocracy. Raisi’s death under the constitution thrust Mokhber into public view. He is expected to serve as caretaker president for some 50 days before mandatory presidential elections in Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the announcement of Mokhber’s appointment in a condolence message he shared for Raisi’s death in the crash Sunday. The helicopter was found Monday in northwestern Iran.

Despite his low-key public profile, Mokhber has held prominent positions with in the country’s power structure, particularly in its bonyads, or charitable foundations. Those groups were fueled by donations or assets seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, particularly those previously associated with Iran’s shah or those in his government.

Mokhber oversaw a bonyad known in English as the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, or EIKO, referring to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The U.S. Treasury said the organization oversaw billions of dollars in assets as “a business juggernaut under the direct supervision of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that has a stake in nearly every sector of the Iranian economy, including energy, telecommunications, and financial services.”

“EIKO has systematically violated the rights of dissidents by confiscating land and property from opponents of the regime, including political opponents, religious minorities, and exiled Iranians,” the Treasury said in 2021 in sanctioning Mokhber. The European Union also had sanctioned Mokhber for a time with others over concerns then about Iran’s nuclear program.

As the head of EIKO, Mokhber oversaw an effort to make a COVID-19 vaccine during the height of the pandemic, pledging to make tens of millions of doses. Only a fraction of that ever made it to the public, without explanation.

Mokhber previously worked in banking and telecommunications. He also worked at the Mostazafan Foundation, another bonyad that’s a major conglomerate that manages the country’s mega-projects and businesses. While there, he found himself entangled in a bitter legal dispute between mobile phone service providers Turkcell and South Africa’s MTN over potentially entering the Iranian market.

MTN ended up entering Iran. A Turkcell filing alleged Mokhber sought MTN’s help in securing “certain defense equipment” in exchange for potentially working with it as opposed to Turkcell.

Mokhber used “improper influence up to and including negotiating with and on behalf of the Supreme Leader in MTN’s favor,” Turkcell later alleged in a legal filing. An MTN report later said there were no arms transfers, though it acknowledge Mokhber was a player in Iran’s decision to go with MTN.

Iranian media reports suggest Mokhber, who holds a doctorate in international law, was crucial in Iranian efforts to bypass Western sanctions on its oil industry.

Mokhber has been a member of Iran’s Expediency Council since 2022, which advises the supreme leader, as well as settles disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog that also oversees the country’s elections.

Mokhber was born Sept. 1, 1955, in Dezful in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province to a clerical family. He served as an officer in the Revolutionary Guard’s medical corps during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, according to the pressure group United Against Nuclear Iran.

“Mokhber used the vast wealth accumulated by EIKO — at the expense of the Iranian people—to reward regime insiders like himself,” UANI said. “Managing the patronage network endeared him to the supreme leader, but at a cost.”

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

An Iranian-American businessman who bankrolls the country’s largest pro-regime lobbying organization, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), is also a donor to left-wing Jewish
organizations hostile to Israel, according to financial disclosure records.

Francis Najafi, an Iranian-born Phoenix investor and large donor to NIAC, which lobbies for policies favorable to the Iranian government, has also been a generous supporter of the anti-Israel Jewish group J Street and and the anti-Israel publication Jewish Currents, to which he has donated $175,000 and $25,000 respectively, according to the organizations’ financial filings.

Najafi is also a board member and donor at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-interventionist think tank that is run by NIAC’s founder and former president, Trita Parsi.

The donation records are the latest indication of a close connection between left-wing Jewish groups and advocates for closer U.S. relations with the Iranian government, which bombed Israel in April and has been financing Hamas’s war against the Jewish state.

Last year, J Street, NIAC, and other left-leaning groups—including the Open Society Foundations and Human Rights Watch—teamed up to launch a lobbying campaign to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Najafi told the Free Beacon that his foundation gives over $5 million a year to “mission driven organizations on education, health, women, children and global peace and security,” including Arizona State University, the International Crisis Group, and others.

“Our donation to JStreet is one of the smallest donation given by our foundation,” he said.

Daniel May, the publisher of Jewish Currents, told the Free Beacon that the magazine was “very proud and honored to have Mr. Najafi’s support for our work. Our relationship is pretty straightforward: as a 501(c)3 we rely on the generous support of many individuals, and he is among them.”

“Regarding editorial decisions, those are made by our editorial team. Donors to Jewish Currents do not have input,” added May.

J Street did not respond to requests for comment.

J Street and Jewish Currents have both criticized Israel’s military operations, with J Street calling for a ceasefire in March and urging the Biden administration and Congress to “impose clear guardrails on Israeli policy” as a condition of military aid to the Jewish state.

Just four days after Hamas’s mass terrorist attacks, the outlet published an article describing Israel’s military response as a “textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”

Najafi, the CEO of the Pivotal Group investment firm, has donated over $600,000 to NIAC since 2011 through his private charity, the Pivotal Foundation, according to tax records.

His contributions to J Street and Jewish Currents began in 2019 and 2022 respectively.

Since 2020, Najafi has also given $350,000 to the Quincy Institute, which is led by Parsi, NIAC’s founder and former president.

The group has pushed for the revival of the Iran nuclear deal, with Parsi arguing that it would be a “significant breakthrough for U.S. national security and stability in the Middle East.”

Najafi, who was born in Iran and moved to the United States at 17, built his fortune in private equity and real estate, and holds a co-ownership stake in the Phoenix Suns.

Prior to 2019, Najafi didn’t appear to donate to any Jewish organizations. His donation history includes several Iranian-American groups, and community organizations in Arizona, where he now resides.

Najafi also gave $100,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020, and in the past two years has given over $12,000 to Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Democratic Senate candidate in Arizona, according to campaign finance records. He has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates in both political parties, according to OpenSecrets.

NIAC is controversial among Iranian-Americans, many of whom have criticized it as an advocate for the Iranian regime. NIAC, which had close relations with the Obama administration, lobbied for closer ties between the United States and the Iranian government and was a key player in promoting the Iran nuclear deal.

In 2008, NIAC sued Iranian-American activist Hassan Daioleslam for defamation after he accused the group of lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government.

A judge tossed the case, saying that NIAC founder Trita Parsi’s work was “not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime.”

Internal NIAC records, obtained by Daioleslam as part of the lawsuit, also showed that Parsi had worked to set up meetings between members of Congress and Iran’s then-United Nations ambassador Javad Zarif, the Washington Times reported.

In 2020, a group of Republican senators asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether NIAC violated foreign lobbying registration laws, arguing that the organization “seems to spread propaganda and lobby on behalf of the Iranian government.”

By: Rich Berdan

NATO is in disarray. NATO rested on their laurels that they could continue unabated in expanding the West’s military alliance to the doorstep of Moscow. The alliance placed all their chips on a bet that an endless supply of weaponry flooded into Ukraine would result in a relatively quick victory over what they naively believed to be a largely ineffective and technologically outdated Russian military lingering from the Soviet era. More to the point, NATO underestimated the Russian Motherland’s willingness to coalesce in defending their national interests and cultural independence from that of an increasingly unrecognizable and opaque European identity.

The much-touted Ukraine spring offensive sputtered in 2023 when Russia built an impenetrable defensive wall that could not be breached. Russia simply does not lose in a slugfest. One only has to look back to when Hitler’s Nazi Germany, a much greater foe, blitzed across the hinterland and had Russia on the ropes. Russia would not go down on the mat no matter how many punches were landed.

NATO now faces a conundrum. Western nations are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in a losing proposition only to find their taxpayers digging out from a deep hole of self-inflicted inflationary debt. The conflict has become a vicious vortex. Ukraine is now running out of fighting age soldiers with upwards of a half a million casualties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is now expanding the draft age that will essentially wipe out a generation of Ukrainian men. Meanwhile, Russia has an insurmountable number of fighting age men rotating into the theatre. No number of weapons from the US and Europe will change the playing field if there is no infantry to fire upon the Russian Army.

What options does NATO possess? Are Western leaders too far invested politically to capitulate? The leading proponents battle mantra, “Whatever it takes for as long as it takes’, has been removed from their songbook. Confidence in Ukraine retaking the Donbas is waning while Crimea is no where close to reality.

Any chance of turning the tide will require expanding the war and sending NATO troops into the ghastly trenches. It is hard to imagine widespread support by populations of the West sending their boys and girls to die in a conflict to regain strips of territory fought over for centuries. American President Joe Biden’s ultimate goal of regime change and removing Russian President Vladimir Putin from power will not be attained through Ukraine. European capitals would become overnight targets while North American may no longer be insulated with the large pond separating it from the main theatre of war. The US could face cyber warfare on key infrastructure, activated terrorist cells coming through the open borders, or worse, nuclear weapons if Russia finds itself cornered.

We are now hearing Germany and the UK are casting together plans to draft young men and women in preparations for a war footing. France President Emmanual Macron has bloviated about sending French troops into Ukraine while the Baltic states have been messaging to see if others jump on board. For all the bluster, it would seem most NATO countries do not have the resolve and would rather see Ukrainians sent into the grinder.

This conflict will drag on to the American elections where if former President Donald Trump is elected, the conflict will be settled where Ukraine loses territory in creating a buffer zone and will not be permitted to join NATO. If Biden is re-elected, the war potentially spirals on with Ukraine all but decimated.

Meanwhile, the West’s sanctions have left the Russian economy stronger than before the war with China and India now the largest recipients of imported Russian oil in return for a lifeline of raw material and components to fuel their military industrial complex. Ukraine’s future is bleak. Western nations will inevitably fold up their tents and go home, leaving Ukraine’s economy languishing in a grey zone reminiscent of the ‘Forbidden Zone’ in the 1968 movie, Planet of the Apes. Past promises of economic investment by corporate giants will not put their shareholders at risk in a country whose infrastructure is in shambles, and the state of a corrupt democracy is in question.

Looking back, historians will most likely conclude the ambitious American-led attempt to expand a militarized NATO on the border with Russia was an ill-conceived strategic failure resulting in millions of lives lost and misplaced, and the catapult vital to compel a significant bi-polar alliance between the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) to counter the once dominate NATO Alliance.

President Xi Jinping of China sees Putin as a key player in their new world order that opposes the United States and its NATO partners. On the other hand, a newly elected Trump Administration would possess the political capital to thwart a wider conflict and mend relationships of mutual respect with current foes.