United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a bipartisan advocacy organization closely tied to neoconservative and other "pro-Israel" factions that promotes a confrontational U.S. stance towards Iran, particularly with respect to its nuclear program. Its goal is to prevent Tehran from fulfilling its purported "ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons."

A program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization, UANI's aims include informing "the public about the nature of the Iranian regime"; heightening "awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran poses to the region and the world"; persuading "the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons, while striving not to punish the Iranian people"; and promoting "efforts that focus on vigorous national and international, social, economic, political, and diplomatic measures."[1]

UANI's president is Gary Samore, a former arms control adviser to the Obama administration who assumed leadership of the group in September 2013. Its CEO is Mark Wallace, a businessman and former diplomat who served as the George W. Bush administration's alternate ambassador to the United Nations alongside John Bolton.[2]

Activities
united-against-nuclear-iran-UANI

UANI employs a multi-pronged approach to isolate the Iranian regime economically and diplomatically, primarily by discouraging corporations from doing business in the country. On the legislative front, UANI "develops model legislation for adoption by the federal government and U.S. state governments to sever Iran from international trade and financial markets and prohibit investment in Iran." According to its website, several of UANI's recommendations were included in the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.[3]

UANI has also targeted companies directly, organizing petitions and "name and shame" campaigns aimed at specific companies it says are doing business with Iran. UANI claims credit for persuading "such corporate heavyweights as General Electric, Huntsman, Caterpillar, Ingersoll Rand, KPMG, Komatsu" to suspend their Iran business, as well as for securing legislative victories in California, New York, and Florida.[4] The group also has a specialized "shipping campaign" to "embargo Iran's shipping and port sectors."[5] As part of this effort, it developed the "Maritime Intelligence Network and Rogue Vessel Analysis (MINERVA) system," which tracks purported Iranian shipping vessels, attempting to show how Iran has attempted to circumvent sanctions by clandestinely exporting oil.[6]

In an earlier campaign, UANI pressured New York hotels to deny lodging to Iranian officials visiting the city for UN business, including then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[7]

In addition to its business-oriented work, UANI also publishes reports and talking points on Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program, promoting notions that the Center for Research on Globalization has characterized as "propagandistic."[8] Among its claims, UANI asserts that Iran is actively developing "nuclear weapons capability" and suggests that the country may have been connected to the 9/11 attacks—both ideas that have been strongly disputed by U.S. intelligence experts.[9]

Although UANI has generally avoided open calls for war, the group has on occasion explicitly promoted the use of military threats or action. In October 2011, for example, after an Iranian-American was arrested for an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington, UANI called on President Barack Obama to"make it clear that Iran will face consequences for its actions, including military retaliation for attacks on Americans."[10]

Much of UANI's work has stressed the dominance of hardliners within the Iranian political establishment. The 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani—a comparatively moderate candidate who campaigned on reaching a diplomatic accommodation with the West—did little to affect the group's posturing. "While the new Iranian President speaks the language of conciliation, as it stands, the regime's nuclear program and odious behavior continue," read a statement on UANI's website.[11]

UANI president Gary Samore similarly attempted to lower expectations surrounding the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the group of world powers known as the P5+1 that followed Rouhani's election. "What [the Iranians are] offering is really no different than what we've heard from the previous government, from Ahmadinejad's government for the last couple of years," Samore said in October 2013, after the Iranians tentatively offered to cap their nuclear enrichment at 20 percent and submit to additional inspections. "They continue to reject any physical limits on their enrichment capacity—meaning the number and type of centrifuge machines, the stockpile of enriched material that they have in country."[12]

UANI characterized the interim agreement that followed the initial talks—which entailed significant restrictions on Iran's nuclear enrichment in exchange for token sanctions relief while a comprehensive agreement was negotiated—as a "disappointment," complaining that the sanctions relief offered in the deal was "disproportionate."[13]

The group's attacks on the diplomatic process drew criticism from the Obama administration. According to Salon, "a former Obama administration official who worked closely on Middle East policy" complained privately that "UANI and its allies 'play the politics for the short-term but they don't offer anything in terms of answers for the long term. … [T]hey're not really interested in ensuring that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. Iran bashing for pro-Israel groups is very common, but I'm concerned that they don't understand that failure to address this issue will ensure that Iran gets the bomb or we're headed toward war.'"[14]

Ideological Connections and Funding

UANI claims to be politically centrist, and its advisory board has included a number of prominent academics and political centrists, including Graham Allison, Walter Russell Meade, and Leslie Gelb.

However, the board's membership has included a host of neoconservatives and right-wing nationalists, including former Sen. Joe Lieberman, a neoconservative Democrat who fell out with his party over his support for the Iraq War; James Woolsey, a former CIA director and high-profile neoconservative activist; Roger Noriega, a former U.S. representative to the U.S. Mission of the Organization of American States; Henry Sokolski, a hawkish strategic weapons expert; Mike Gerson, a torture advocate and former spokesperson for President Bush; Mark Lagon, a former State Department official who later served as an aide to Jeane Kirkpatrickat the American Enterprise Institute; and Otto Reich, a controversial Reagan-era figure implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal who maintains close ties to right-wing factions in Latin America.[15]

UANI's CEO is Mark Wallace, a former U.S. diplomat at the United Nations, legal adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, and deputy campaign manager for the 2004 reelection campaign of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The group advertises two original cofounders, both of whom were given high profile posts in the administration of President Barack Obama: the late Richard Holbrooke and the controversial "pro-Israel" U.S diplomat Dennis Ross.[16]

remainder: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/united_against_nuclear_iran