“United Against Nuclear Iran,” (UANI)

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The Living Force
A US-based organization, which calls itself “United Against Nuclear Iran,” (UANI) is trying to portray Iran as a nuclear threat to peace and impose sanctions against Tehran’s economic partners around the world. In an interview with Sputnik, Rahman Hariri, a foreign relations expert in Tehran, took a closer look at this organization.

Who is Really Behind the US-Based Organization 'United Against Nuclear Iran'?
https://sputniknews.com/us/201610121046253792-iran-us-ngo/

“UANI was established in 2008 by Mark Wallace, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross. Mark Wallace is a former US ambassador to the UN, a prominent member of the Republican Party and a personal friend of ex-President George Bush Sr. The organization is presided over by Gary Samore, who once advised President Obama on arms control and weapons of mass destruction. This group is trying to hamper Iran’s economic relations with the outside world with the help of negative media coverage and threats to companies doing business with Tehran,” Rahman Hariri said.

Even though “United Against Nuclear Iran” poses as a nongovernmental organization, its leaders have close links to the White House and the US Congress, and have played a role in Washington’s decision to impose sanctions on Iran.

“Judging by what this organization and its supporters are doing, it looks like they are stoking up anti-Iranian sentiment in the world and undermining the Islamic Republic’s foreign trade, especially after Iran and the P5+1 Group came to a final agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program in July 2015,” Hariri noted.

United Against Nuclear Iran is a nonprofit advocacy group that aims to inform the public about the nature of the political regime now existing in Iran, to raise US and global awareness of the threat a nuclear-armed Iran could pose to the world, and to promote efforts that focus on vigorous national and international, social, economic, political and diplomatic measures in this direction.

“This means that the organization is opposed to Iran’s nuclear program and is working to economically and politically isolate the Islamic Republic and prevent US companies from doing business with Iran even by using threats against the families of US company employees,” Rahman Hariri said.

They make it look as if Iran is posing a triple threat to the world with the development of its nuclear program, human rights violation and sponsoring international terrorism.

Who are the sponsors?

Rahman Hariri said that UANI is sponsored by members of the American-Israeli lobby, including the 100,000-strong American-Israeli Public Relations Committee which spends millions of dollars each a year on its efforts to influence US policy.

The list of other sponsors includes the Gulf states, Western and Asian countries, which have always tried to minimize Iran’s trade and military ties with the outside world and who gained much from the international sanctions imposed on Tehran.

These are also the US Republican Party, the anti-Iranian lobby in the US and the EU, the intelligence agencies of the United States, the European Union and of a number of Arab countries. And also big cartels and major US companies which come out against Iran’s nuclear program in a bid to phase out competition and be the only ones working in the country.

Who is behind UANI?

Rahman Hariri said that, first and foremost, these are certain political, military and intelligence organizations in the US, as well as the Republicans and members of the Israeli lobby who are against President Obama’s policy and the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran and the P5+1 signed last year.

Secondly, this is the US government which, contrary to its officially declared policy, is providing covert support to UANI thus discouraging Tehran from implementing the JCPOA.

“UANI is using diplomatic resources available to it to undermine Iran’s positions in the world and is working hard to intimidate US and foreign companies willing to do business with Tehran,” he noted.

He added that in order to effectively neutralize the destructive work done by organizations like UANI the world needed to strengthen international nongovernmental institutions, pursue a policy of relaxation of global tensions and provide an undistorted picture of Iran in the media and in the minds of millions of people around the world.
 
Document Reveals Billionaire Backers Behind United Against Nuclear Iran

https://lobelog.com/document-reveals-billionaire-backers-behind-united-against-nuclear-iran/

Among the many groups engaged in advocacy over a potential deal between Iran and world powers, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) stands apart as by far the most mysterious. Late last month, UANI announced it would launch a “multi-million dollar” ad campaign, noting “a growing concern that U.S. negotiators could be pressured into making dangerous concessions in order to cement a deal,” according to the group’s CEO, Mark Wallace.

As the ad buy suggests, UANI draws on a deep well of resources to fund fretful warnings about the dangers of compromising with Iran’s nuclear negotiators. But, despite piecemeal information unearthed in my previous reporting, a more comprehensive look at UANI’s funding has until now remained obscured by a US government-backed veil of secrecy: the group’s donor rolls were among the documents a plaintiff was seeking in a defamation case against UANI until the Justice Department quashed the suit with an invocation of state secrets.

Now, however, I’ve obtained and reviewed a comprehensive list of UANI’s major donors in UANI’s 2013 tax year, providing some answers about who is backing the group’s efforts.

According to the “Schedule B” filing that tax-exempt nonprofits must submit to the IRS, the top donors to UANI are a pair of trusts associated with the billionaire Thomas Kaplan and a family foundation operated by Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam. Together, the funding associated with Kaplan and Adelson accounted for more than three-quarters of the group’s total revenue of $1.7 million for the 2013 tax year.

As I previously reported for The Nation, Adelson’s family foundation contributed half a million dollars to UANI that year.

Kaplan’s contributions to the anti-Iran group were larger overall—totaling $843,000, around half the UANI’s annual revenue for that tax year—but through two separate trusts managed by his company, named in the schedule B document as The Tigris Group. (Known Kaplan companies include The Tigris Financial Group, The Tigris Group of Companies, and The Electrum Group.) The first, Butterfield Trust, is described in a 2011 Sunshine Silver Mines prospectus as “trustee of a trust primarily for the benefit of members of the family of Dr. Thomas Kaplan.” Butterfield Trust contributed $281,000 to UANI in 2013. The other Kaplan trust, New Generations, gave UANI $562,000, according to the Schedule B.

Lawsuit Against UANI

UANI, an outfit dedicated to promoting and strengthening sanctions and taking a hard line in the current Iran nuclear negotiations, made headlines earlier this year thanks to a bizarre lawsuit. Victor Restis sued UANI for defamation in July 2013 after the group accused him of doing illegal business with Iran, characterizing the Greek shipping magnate and an associate of being “front-men” for the Iranian government.

This past March, the Justice Department succeeded in getting the case dismissed. As part of discovery, the legal term for exchanging documents and information before trial. Restis’s lawyers had asked UANI to produce documents backing up its allegations in court, as well as some general information about the group, including its donor rolls. But the Justice Department shielded UANI from complying with the requests by invoking state secrets. An amicus brief filed by civil liberties groups said the intervention was unprecedented: “Never before has the government sought dismissal of a suit between private parties on state secrets grounds without providing the parties and the public any information about the government’s interest in the case.”

In the fall of 2014, as the case was heating up, UANI released a statement responding to queries raised by Restis’s legal team. The statement claimed that “UANI has never sought or received funds from any foreign individual” and that “UANI has never sought or received funds from any business about which UANI has expressed concerns regarding business with Iran.” The statement added that the group was “unaware of any donor to UANI who even knows Mr. Restis, much less that competes in any way with Mr. Restis’ businesses.” The denials, however, became nearly impossible to confirm when the Justice Department asked a judge to block the case, which could have led to the release of donor information.

“These kinds of financial ties were among what we specifically requested in discovery,” Restis’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, told LobeLog.

“The [new] information only confirms that there is a need to unravel the web of financial and political involvement between this organization and its supporters both in the United States and abroad,” said Lowell. “That is what we are seeking to do in this litigation to create transparency of the many interests involved.”

Pattern of Giving

Both Thomas Kaplan and Sheldon Adelson have family ties to Israel. Adelson gives in concert with his Israeli-born wife, Miriam. “I am not Israeli,” Sheldon Adelson said at a 2010 event, speaking about the founding of Israel Hayom, a right-wing newspaper he owns in Israel. Standing beside Miriam, however, Adelson went on: “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.”

The Kaplan trust New Generations is associated with Kaplan and his wife, Dafna Recanati Kaplan, the daughter of influential Israeli investor Leon Recanati (Leon’s late uncle Raphael, an Israeli-American businessman, was himself a shipping magnate).

Both sets of major donors raise questions about UANI’s professed non-partisanship.

The Adelsons give almost exclusively to the Republican Party, Republican candidates, and right-wing dark money groups; Kaplan gives to both parties, but the sums to Republican affiliates and candidates, between the 2012 election cycle and the present, were higher, at a ratio of roughly 10 to 1. Before the 2012 election, Kaplan contributed $6,200 respectively to the Idaho, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Oklahoma Republican parties as well as $30,800 to the Republican National Committee. He also contributed $58,100 to the Romney Victory committee and $100,000 to the Romney-supporting Restore Our Future super PAC. The Adelsons, for their part, were reported to have spent $150 million to support Republican candidates in the 2012 election and contributed up to $100 million to support Republicans in the 2014 Senate midterms—not to mention a host of right-wing pressure groups that enjoy the Adelsons’ largesse.

Stance on Iran

Both Thomas Kaplan and Sheldon Adelson have made hawkish statements about Iran.

Adelson famously proposed launching a first-strike nuclear attack against Iran to send a message to Tehran’s nuclear negotiators. And Kaplan publicly compared UANI’s effectiveness to advanced weaponry, presumably targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, during a March 2014 event held in his honor. “United Against Nuclear Iran may not have had Tomahawk missiles and aircraft carriers at its disposal, [but] we’ve done more to bring Iran to heel than any other private sector initiative and most public ones,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan’s business interests also present an interesting angle on his funding anti-Iran advocacy like UANI’s. As I noted in a previous report for Salon, one of Kaplan’s mining concerns, the now-bankrupt Apex Silver Mines, Ltd., advertised itself in an annual report as a sound investment because of the potential for a “nuclear confrontation” with Iran. Likewise with another silver venture called Sunshine Silver Mines: a 2011 investment prospectus talked up silver investments in light of “political unrest in the Middle East.” Amb. Mark Wallace, who had by then already taken the helm at UANI, was overseeing Sunshine under the aegis of the Tigris Financial Group, where Wallace serves as CEO.

At the time the prospectus talked up “political unrest,” three of Kaplan’s companies controlled Sunshine through a 70 percent stake; half of that stake was held by the Butterfield Trust—the same Kaplan trust that gave UANI almost $300,000 in 2013.

Adelson’s family foundation declined to comment on their contribution to UANI. Neither UANI nor Kaplan’s office responded to requests for comment.

UANI’s 2013 “Schedule B” can be viewed here. https://www.scribd.com/document/270211857/United-Against-Nuclear-Iran-2013-Schedule-B


Data from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Against_Nuclear_Iran


The official website

http://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/


Senior Leadership

http://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/about/leadership
 
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