The National Iranian American Council is not having a good month. It often claims (falsely) that it is the largest Iranian American grassroots organization in the United States, but it is not: the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans is.

As mass protests erupted across Iran, NIAC President Jamal Abdi blamed U.S. sanctions rather than Iranian security forces for the sudden shut down of the Iranian internet. This was completely disingenuous and ignores years of discussion among Iranian security organs about how to control the internet. Just days before the eruption of protests in Iran, for example, the Iranian government announced that it would create its own official VPNs to prevent Iranians from using other VPN services to bypass the regime information bubble.