By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN
FEDERAL COURT, Jan 19 – A professor is charged with violation US law by lobbying for Iran and its Mission to the UN, including a US Congress members, without registering under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The US Attorney for the EDNY is charging Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, also known as “Lotfolah Kaveh Afrasiabi,” with acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in violation of FARA.
Afrasiabi was arrested on January 18 at his home in Watertown, Massachusetts, and will make his initial appearance on January 19 in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts, before United States Magistrate Judge Jennifer C. Boal.
On the morning of January 19, given the multiple references in the complaint to the UN, Inner City Press in writing asked UN Sec-Gen Antonio Guterres and his spokespeople Stephane Dujarric and Melissa Fleming, "What are comments and actions if any of SG Guterres on today's EDNY indictment of Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, a/k/a “Lotfolah Kaveh Afrasiabi,” with acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in violation of US FARA?"
Hours later, no answer. Inner City Press was by Guterres banned from attending the UN noon briefing to ask - this while the UN gives multiple taxpayer funded office to Iran state media. No one else allowed in asked about the case.
From the complaint: Afrasiabi "has surreptitiously derived a significant portion of his income from compensation for services performed at the direction and under the control of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (“GOI”) and officials of the GOI assigned to the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations (“IMUN”) in New York City. In performing these services, AFRASIABI has not registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as an agent of a foreign principal, the GOI...
"On January 5, 2020, AFRASIABI emailed GOI officials, including the Foreign Minister and the GOI’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (“Permanent Representative-3”) with advice for the GOI’s “retaliation” for the killing of Soleimani, writing: 25 Ba salam, as a foreign policy expert, I advise the government not to pull out of barjam7 and yet end all inspections and end all information on Iran’s nuclear activities pending a UNSC condemnation of US’ illegal crime. The advantages are as follows: 1. it will strike fear in the heart of enemy 2. it will weaken Trump and strengthen his opponents 3. it shows Iran's rule abiding behavior and puts pressure on UN and Europe to act. 4. It is an important retaliation and will be well received by people. 70. In a later email to Permanent Representative-3 on or about January 7, 2020, AFRASIABI advised that “we shoukd show heroic restraint,” and in an apparent reference to the United States, AFRASIABI continued “[e]nemy has laid trap for a war we must avoid.”
AFRASIABI received more than $265,000 from the IMUN in checks payable to him and drawn on official bank accounts held in the name of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations. The memo lines of many of the most recently issued checks have explicitly described the payments as “salary.” 78. Many of the payments made to AFRASIABI by officials of the GOI assigned to the IMUN since 2012 have been drawn on the IMUN’s bank account at a financial institution in Long Island City in Queens, New York."
Would that be the UN Federal Credit Union, about which Inner City Press has previously reported, before being banned by Guterres, now seeking a second term as UNSG? Watch this site.
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