Spinning the Iran Deal to the Media: Elite Philanthropy Disguised as Grassroots Activism

[brooklynite]

Capital Research Center

The light media coverage means that many Americans may be unaware of the heavy funding—and strange bedfellows—pushing the Biden administration to reenter the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal. Curiously, Iran seems determined to violate the provisions of the agreement to create leverage to convince member nations to lift sanctions.

One weirder aspect of this almost certain return to Middle East diplomacy of the early 2010s is the aligning of ostensible political enemies under a new foreign policy think tank called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Two of the best-known funders of the Quincy Institute are progressive billionaire George Soros and libertarian icon Charles Koch. This alliance makes it quite reasonable that Tablet Magazine recently referred to the new think tank—which purports to embrace the idea of restraint in foreign policy—as something of a strange chimera.

According to its application for tax exemption filed with the Internal Revenue Service in July 2019, which Tablet has obtained, Quincy’s purpose would be “to educate the public about ‘restraint,’ a foreign policy grand strategy developed by interdisciplinary academic thought-leaders,” and to support scholars who “generally argue that in regions where the US possesses vital interests, it should lead with diplomacy.” The institute’s titular director and president is Andrew Bacevich, a historian, former U.S. Army colonel, and a widely respected if sometimes overwrought proponent of the idea that a military-industrial complex has hijacked American society. The IRS document identifies Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council [NIAC] until 2018, as another one of Quincy’s co-founders and as its executive vice president. The tax exemption application lists Parsi’s estimated compensation at $275,000 a year, compared with $50,000 for Bacevich—a fair indication of who is actually running Washington’s weirdest and most intriguing foreign policy shop.

[karynnj]

1. Note that Sarah Lee also calls J Street fake grassroots and Soros funded

Last edited Mon May 31, 2021, 06:51 PM - Edit history (1)

Having gone to a J Street convention precovid with friends from. Synagogue including our rabbi, I can say the people there were real people. She also whines that this think tank was not positive about the Abraham Accords. It does not take a genius to tell this is not an unbiased article.

[zaj]

2. This is from a RW Propaganda outlet

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The CRC said Al Gore's campaign to control carbon emissions is motivated by the likelihood that he will make an "immense fortune" if laws are passed to control them;[12] argues that organized labor is bad for America;[13] and has criticized government efforts to weaken intellectual property protection of prescription medications.[14]

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