Kerry and Iran

Who is Susan Akbarpur?

She is a major fundraiser for Kerry and an Iranian immigrant with ties to the regime in Tehran. Kenneth Timmerman has a long article on her in the most recent American Spectator. He also outlines Kerry's proposed policy toward one of the worst state sponsers of terrorism in the world. (You can download a PDF at the article on his website.)

Here are some excerpts:

Sen. john kerry's ties to pro-regime Iranians run deep. Kerry has already announced that if elected he would seek to engage the Mullahs in Tehran. And in a series of public statements, he has bought onto virtually the entire pro-regime agenda that supporters such as Susan Akbarpour have encouraged him to adopt. These measures include ending the fingerprinting of Iranian visitors to the United States, expanding "family reunion" visas to allow extended family members of Iranians living in the U.S. to immigrate to this country legally and in large numbers, and offering a "dialogue" with the hard-line clerics in Tehran. On August 30, Kerry's running mate John Edwards told the Washington Post that, if elected, a Kerry administration would seek to make a "grand bargain" that would allow Iran to keep most of its disputed nuclear program, which the State Department believes is intended to conceal a crash effort to develop nuclear weapons. So the stakes are high.
*******************
More significant, however, were Kerry's attempts in his speech to curry favor with the pro-Tehran crowd. Kerry called for efforts to "engage" the Islamic Republic, help the Tehran regime to join the World Trade Organization, and remove visa restrictions on Iranians that were imposed post-September 11. He came out against any forms of terrorist profiling that would single out Middle Easterners.

Kerry repeated his intention to "engage" the Islamic Republic of Iran—rather than isolate the leadership—in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations on December 3, 2003.

Captain's Quarters has more here.