102-529: The National Iranian American Council ( NIAC ; Persian : شورای ملی ایرانیان آمریکا ) is a lobbying group widely viewed as the de facto "Iran Lobby" in Washington, D.C. due to its history of lobbying for stances on behalf of, and aligned with, the Islamic Republic of Iran . NIAC Action PAC is its affiliated political action committee and was formed in 2015. The organization's first president
204-642: A Congressional letter (Dent-Price), which was signed by 131 Representatives, advocated for giving negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue a chance after the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani . Negar Mortazavi is a former employee of NIAC. Ben Rhodes , deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration, was a keynote speaker at one of NIAC's events. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ),
306-655: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
408-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
510-505: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
612-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from
714-416: A negative view of economic sanctions against Iran and has opposed many proposals to sanction Iran and urged the repeal of sanctions it calls counterproductive. The organization led campaigns to lift sanctions that blocked humanitarian organizations from providing disaster relief to Iranians, and helped remove sanctions on online communication tools like Facebook and YouTube. In 2015, the organization supported
816-536: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and
918-440: A relationship with Zarif after interviewing him on "numerous occasions for his book." It states that Parsi made introductions for members of the U.S. Congress to meet with Zarif at the request of the lawmakers. According to The Washington Time's article, "Law enforcement experts who reviewed some of the documents, which were made available to The Times by the defendant in the suit, say e-mails between Mr. Parsi and Iran’s ambassador to
1020-451: A shift from the law's initial focus on criminal prosecution, as the number of successful civil cases and administrative resolutions increased since that time. In 1995, the term "political propaganda" was removed from Subsection 611 following the 1987 Supreme Court case, Meese v. Keene , in which a California State Senator wanted to distribute three films from Canada about acid rain and nuclear war but felt his reputation would be harmed if
1122-512: A slur that is synonymous with regime lobby/apologist to the point that Iranians inside Iran use it". In 2023, journalist Emily Schrader claimed her criticism of NIAC as one of the "foreign lobbying mouthpieces of the Islamic Republic" led to death threats and antisemitic comments. NIAC has a 100% rating from Charity Navigator and a Platinum Seal of Transparency by Guidestar . NIAC has over 8,000 donors including Iranian-American individuals and American foundations and does not receive funds from
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#17327756719751224-599: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are
1326-615: Is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It
1428-664: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian
1530-628: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of
1632-850: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
1734-675: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting
1836-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of
1938-455: Is instigated from foreign countries and attacks the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution, and (3) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in any necessary remedial legislation." Pursuant to the findings and recommendations of the committee, FARA was enacted in 1938 to target foreign propaganda and political subversion, particularly from Nazi sources abroad; foreign agents were implicated by
2040-460: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with
2142-475: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),
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#17327756719752244-585: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became
2346-510: Is reasonable to rationally assert that NIAC is lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government . In addition, the judge also concluded, "Nothing in this opinion should be construed as a finding that defendant’s articles were true." In 2015, NIAC was monetary sanctioned by two circuit judges and a senior circuit judge, in favor of Daioleslam. As a result of the lawsuits, many internal documents were released, which former Washington Times correspondent Eli Lake stated "raise questions" about whether
2448-495: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting
2550-491: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
2652-506: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on
2754-668: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of
2856-651: The Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation. FARA does not prohibit lobbying for foreign interests, nor does it ban or restrict any specific activities. Its explicit purpose is to promote transparency with respect to foreign influence over American public opinion, policy, and laws; to that end, the DOJ is required to make information concerning foreign agents' registrations and their disclosed activities on behalf of foreign principals publicly available. FARA
2958-687: The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and they are "amplifying regime propaganda in the United States". They requested the US Attorney-General William Barr to "evaluate whether an investigation of NIAC is warranted for potential FARA violations and to ensure transparency regarding foreign attempts to influence the US political process." In 2022, Holly Dagres stated that "NIAC has become
3060-646: The Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, D.C. in 1981 and the prohibition against fundraising within the United States on behalf of certain violent groups opposed to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process . The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 prohibits, among other activities, domestic fundraising that benefits foreign organizations designated by the United States as terrorist. Although
3162-674: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of
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3264-677: The Trump administration . Subsequent high-profile indictments and convictions under FARA have prompted greater public, political, and legal scrutiny, including calls for reform. FARA is administered and enforced by the FARA Unit of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES) within the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD). Since 2016, there has been a 30 percent increase in registrations; as of November 2022, there were over 500 active foreign agents registered with
3366-713: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
3468-661: The U.S. Constitution enshrines the right to petition the government , including through political lobbying , and makes no distinction between citizens and noncitizens. As a result, efforts to address foreign influence have generally avoided censorship in favor of transparency. Only in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I , did Congress make the first formal attempts to regulate or restrict foreign lobbying, taking into consideration measures that would require foreign agents to publicly disclose their advocacy and prohibiting noncitizen residents from acting as foreign agents without prior government permission. In response to
3570-720: The White House , and federal agencies , many of whom were not registered under FARA. Following a spike in public attention, registrations, and prominent cases in 2016, Foreign Affairs magazine declared, "FARA is no longer a forgotten and oft ignored piece of New Deal –era reforms. Eight decades after being enacted, FARA is finally worth the paper it was written on." The Act requires periodic disclosure of all activities and finances by: Organizations under such foreign control can include political agents, public relations counsel, publicity agents, information-service employees, political consultants, fundraisers or those who represent
3672-508: The Women, Life, Freedom Movement and is still looking for a way to reform by trying to reestablish the JCPOA deal. It was also revealed in 2019 that the U.S. Department of State funded a group which attacked NIAC with the hashtag "#NIACLobbies4Mullahs". In January 2020, senators Tom Cotton , Ted Cruz and Mike Braun claimed that NIAC and its sister organization NIAC Action have violated
3774-491: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian
3876-535: The rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany, the House created the Special Committee on Un-American Activities to address the growing concerns about foreign propaganda in the U.S. The committee was tasked with conducting investigations into three issues: "(1) the extent, character, and objects of Nazi propaganda activities in the United States, (2) the diffusion within the United States of subversive propaganda that
3978-597: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,
4080-716: The Act to define foreign principals under the Act to only be foreign governments or political parties or those operating on their behalf, as well as amend the current broad and unclear agency definition in FARA to instead mimic the Restatement of the Law of Agency, Third definition. In July 2020, Attorney General William Barr warned U.S. companies and executives that advocating on behalf of Chinese government interests may violate FARA requirements. In November 2021, Reuters reported that
4182-399: The Act was amended and narrowed to emphasize agents actually working with foreign powers who sought economic or political advantage by influencing governmental decision-making. The amendments shifted the focus of the law from propaganda to political lobbying and narrowed the meaning of "foreign agent." Consequently, an individual or organization could not be placed in the FARA database unless
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4284-588: The Act. Among the most prominent are: FARA is one of several federal statutes aimed at persons called foreign agents. The Taiwan Relations Act and the Compact of Free Association with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands authorize the exemption of otherwise covered agents. Additionally, there have been laws targeting specific foreign agents, such as the closure of
4386-881: The American Zionist Council to register as a foreign agent under FARA because it was funded by the Jewish Agency for Israel and thereby acting on behalf of Israel; the Department of Justice later withdrew its demand. A 2023 article in The Nation stated that FARA "has been used as a tool to go after such anti-war and human rights organizations as the Irish Northern Aid Committee , the Committee in Solidarity with
4488-681: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to
4590-520: The Department of Justice to register the lobby under the Act. The 2005 case, United States v. Franklin, Rosen, and Weissman , against United States Department of Defense employee Larry Franklin , AIPAC policy director Steven Rosen , and AIPAC senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman , raised the possibility that AIPAC would come under greater scrutiny by the Department of Justice. While Franklin pleaded guilty to passing government secrets to Rosen and Weissman, as well as to an Israeli government official,
4692-514: The FARA Unit. Foreign influence over American politics has been a recurring concern since the nation's founding. In 1796, prior to his retirement from the presidency, George Washington warned about foreign nations seeking to influence both the American government and the public, namely through local "tools and dupes". As early as 1808, the House of Representatives sought to investigate U.S. Army General James Wilkinson over allegations that he
4794-638: The Iran nuclear accord as one of the "Top lobbying victories of 2015." In July 2019, NIAC was the target of sustained protests from members of the Iranian community with demonstrations in front of the NIAC office in Washington DC. They viewed NIAC as "the representative of the corrupt and brutal Islamic Republic regime " and not the voice of the Iranian-Americans . Iranians who were protesting for regime change believe that NIAC has not joined
4896-558: The Iranian government nor the United States government. Their funders have included the Namazi family who funded NIAC while it pursued policies which would financially benefit the family. NIAC has been described the Islamic Republic 's lobby in Washington, DC . A NIAC report concluded that U.S. sanctions on Iran cost the U.S. economy between $ 135 billion and $ 175 billion in lost export revenue between 1995 and 2012. NIAC takes
4998-627: The Justice Department with civil investigative demand authority to better enforce the Act, and to eliminate the Lobbying Disclosure Act exemption to improve compliance. The Department of Justice has also proposed expanding civil enforcement under the statute. Nonprofits have complained that the broad definitions in FARA can capture much routine nonprofit activity, requiring them to potentially register as foreign agents. In response, there have been proposals to amend
5100-565: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it
5202-543: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After
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#17327756719755304-850: The People of El Salvador , and Palestine Information Office . [I]n 2018, the Republican-controlled House Committee on Natural Resources initiated FARA inquiries against four environmental advocacy organizations, including Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council ". The American Zionist Council was reorganized as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In 1988 former Senator William Fulbright and former senior CIA official Victor Marchetti unsuccessfully petitioned
5406-459: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian
5508-425: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in
5610-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under
5712-487: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,
5814-428: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
5916-427: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
6018-407: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
6120-483: The United Nations at the time, Javad Zarif - and an internal review of the Lobbying Disclosure Act - offer evidence that the group has operated as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws." During the Obama administration, NIAC reached the height of its influence as it advocated in support of the Iran nuclear deal . The Congressional publication, The Hill , cited NIAC's work in support of
6222-458: The act was designed to apply to any foreign agent, it has been accused of being used to target countries out of favor with a given administration. This was alleged by the Irish Northern Aid Committee in legal filings. In the 1980s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted operations against the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) allegedly based on selective enforcement of FARA. It has been noted that during
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#17327756719756324-441: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
6426-575: The basis that it lacked the resources and personnel; consequently, authority over enforcing the act was transferred to the Department of Justice in 1942. A "Foreign Agents Registration Section" was created within the DOJ's newly established War Division during World War II , and a total of 23 criminal cases were prosecuted on the basis of FARA. Following the end of the war in 1945, enforcement of FARA declined significantly: Only two indictments were brought between 1945 and 1955, followed by nine "failure to file" indictments between 1955 and 1962. In 1966
6528-515: The cases against Rosen and Weissman were dismissed and no actions against AIPAC were instituted. Leaked documents from the Israeli ministry of Justice revealed that in 2018 the ministry was concerned that compliance with FARA would damage the reputation of Israeli-directed American groups, and that political donors would be reluctant to fund them if registered under the law. The ministry thus sought legal advice on FARA from law firm Sandler Reiff , from 2018 through at least 2022. The proposed solution
6630-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being
6732-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by
6834-430: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
6936-426: The films were to be classified officially as "political propaganda." The court affirmed an earlier lower court ruling in favor of one of the film's distributors in Block v. Meese . The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 provided exemptions under FARA for certain agents who register with Congress and are thereby permitted to lobby the legislative and executive branches directly. An online database of FARA registrants
7038-496: The following phylogenetic classification: Foreign Agents Registration Act The Foreign Agents Registration Act ( FARA ) ( 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq. ) is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests . It requires "foreign agents"—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons ("foreign principals")—to register with
7140-753: The foreign power before any agency or official of the United States government. The law does not include news or press services not owned by the foreign principal. It also provides explicit exemptions for organizations engaged in "religious, scholastic, academic, or scientific pursuits or of the fine arts," as well as for those "not serving predominantly a foreign interest." Examples of organizations lobbying on behalf of foreign governments are DMP International , Flynn Intel Group , DLA Piper , Dickens & Madson Canada, Invest Northern Ireland , Japan National Tourism Organization , Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, and Ketchum Inc. There have been several dozen criminal prosecutions and civil cases under
7242-444: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
7344-476: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
7446-462: The government proved that they were acting "at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal" and proved that the alleged foreign agent engaged "in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal," including by "represent[ing] the interests of such foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States." Due to
7548-421: The greater burden of proof placed on the government, until 2015, there only seven criminal prosecutions under FARA, none of which resulted in a conviction. However, a civil injunctive remedy also was added to allow the Department of Justice to warn individuals and entities of possible violations of the Act, ensuring more voluntary compliance while making it clear when the law has been violated. This has resulted in
7650-466: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
7752-449: The law regardless of whether they were acting "for or on behalf of" those interests. The law would not ban such activities but instead require that individuals engaged in propaganda on behalf of foreign governments and principals register with the government and disclose information about their clients, activities, and contract terms. Enforcement of the act was assigned to the Department of State , which opposed having such responsibility on
7854-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following
7956-536: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as
8058-466: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created
8160-499: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal
8262-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian
8364-732: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
8466-542: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
8568-635: The organization had violated U.S. lobbying regulations. Andrew Sullivan responded to the story in The Atlantic , suggesting the motive of the story was to "smear" Parsi's reputation. A March 2015 column by Eli Lake in Bloomberg View asserted that the emails showed cooperation between Parsi and the then Iran ambassador to the United Nations and current Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif . NIAC's webpage confirms "that Parsi developed
8670-694: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
8772-647: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in
8874-602: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali
8976-573: The same period it investigated CISPES, the FBI ignored possible FARA violations such as Soldier of Fortune magazine running back cover advertisements to help the Rhodesian national army recruit fighters. In the 1950s President Eisenhower's administration repeatedly demanded that leaders of the American Zionist Council register as "agents of a foreign government." In November 1962 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy 's Department of Justice ordered
9078-613: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced
9180-573: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
9282-777: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,
9384-485: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in
9486-497: Was Trita Parsi who also its cofounder. Its president is now Jamal Abdi. NIAC was founded in 2002 by Trita Parsi , Babak Talebi, and Farzin Illich to promote Iranian-American relations. In 1999, Parsi co-authored a paper named " Iran-Americans: The bridge between two nations " which explained need of an organization like NIAC. In 2007, Arizona-based Iranian-American journalist Seid Hassan Daioleslam began publicly asserting that NIAC
9588-465: Was a Spanish spy. In 1852, a joint resolution was introduced in Congress that invoked Washington's warning and reaffirmed the U.S. government's commitment "'Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence'". Notwithstanding deeply rooted anxieties about foreign interference in American politics, it is not illegal for Americans to advocate for foreign governments or interests. The First Amendment to
9690-406: Was added by the Department of Justice . In 2004 the Justice Department stated that the FARA Unit's database for tracking foreign lobbyists was in disrepair; by 2007, it launched an online database which can be used by the public to search filings and current reports. That same year, the DOJ reported that there were approximately 1,700 lobbyists representing more than 100 countries before Congress,
9792-597: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of
9894-427: Was enacted in 1938 primarily to counter Nazi propaganda , with an initial focus on criminal prosecution of subversive activities; since 1966, enforcement has shifted mostly to civil penalties and voluntary compliance. For most of its existence, FARA was relatively obscure and rarely invoked; since 2017, the law has been enforced with far greater regularity and intensity, particularly against officials connected to
9996-673: Was for Israel to create and fund a new American nonprofit organization that would be informally managed by the Israeli government. There have been proposals to reform FARA to both improve its enforcement and modernize its provisions. In September 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released an audit of the National Security Division's enforcement of FARA. The audit noted that NSD officials had proposed amending FARA to provide
10098-411: Was lobbying on behalf of Iran . In response, NIAC sued him for defamation. In 2012, it was dismissed by the court on the grounds of not having significant evidences that would constitute defamation. As part of his decision, Judge Bates concluded that NIAC's president work was "not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the regime." The judge came to the conclusion that it
10200-597: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in
10302-613: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in
10404-492: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
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